A few weeks ago I released out a new version of my Configuring a Training Environment for Dynamics AX 2012 guide to you which stepped you all through the process of provisioning a new training environment for Dynamics AX within Azure and also shows you how you can create the blank training partition which will be used as the base learning environment for all of the other books in the series.

Over the past week or so I have had the chance to expand out this guide by adding in a few new sections including how to install and configure a local version of the Dynamics AX 2012 Virtual Machine, how to license the virtual machines if they expire, and incorporated the second guide on configuring a base partition and legal entity into the guide as well. Here is the full TOC from the new version of the guide.

CHAPTER 1: USING LIFECYCLE SEVICES AND AZURE TO HOST DYNAMICS AX

Signing Up for an Azure Account

Registering for your own Lifecycle Services Account

Creating Your First Lifecycle Services Project

Linking Lifecycle Services And Azure

Creating an Azure Hosted Environment through Lifecycle Services

Accessing Your Virtual Machine From Azure

Viewing The Lifecycle Services Methodologies

Turning Your Virtual Machine Off

CHAPTER 2: CONFIGURING A LOCAL VIRTUAL MACHINE (NEW)

Downloading the Virtual Machine Image from CustomerSource

Decompressing the Virtual Machine

Enabling Hyper-V

Mounting the Virtual Machine Through Hyper-V

CHAPTER 3: MAINTAINING YOUR VIRTUAL MACHINE LICENSES (NEW)

Relicensing the Virtual Machine for 180 Days

Relicensing Dynamics AX

CHAPTER 4: CREATING A NEW PARTION

Creating A New Partition

Creating A New Shortcut To The Partition

Initializing The Partition

CHAPTER 5: CONFIGURING THE SYSTEM FOR THE FIRST TIME

Changing The Default Company

Configure The Default Document Types Storage Locations

Importing Default User Profiles

Adding Your User To A Role

Importing Additional Users

Configuring Enterprise Portal Links

Configuring Enterprise Search Server

CHAPTER 6: CONFIGURING YOUR ORGANIZATION

Initialize the Organizations Number Sequences

Importing Address Zip Code, City, State & County Components

Configuring The Global Address Book Properties

Configuring Default Address Books

Configure Working Time Templates

Configuring Your Organizational Calendar

Creating A Default Email Template

Configuring Your Default Workflow Parameters

Configure The Alert Notification Parameters

Creating A New Worker Record

Associating Users With Workers

CHAPTER 7: CONFIGURING YOUR LEGAL ENTITY

Adding an Address to the Legal Entity

Adding A Logo To Your Legal Entity

This has expanded the guide from 188 or so pages to around 420 pages, and is now a complete reference for people who want to set up their own version of Dynamics AX 2012 for testing and training, and also shows how to configure the base system in order to be ready to move through all of the Bare Bones Configuration Guides that I have developed.

If you haven’t seen any of my guides, then this walkthrough guide is formatted to give you a step by step guide with full screen illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each illustration is a great visual reference as to what you should be seeing on the screen and has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step. This is an ideal way for a novice user to step through the examples within guide.

If you have already picked up a copy of the original guide that I published a couple of weeks ago then don’t frett, you should have already received a link to where you can re-download the updated version of the guide. Being an early ready does have it’s perks.

I hope this is useful to everyone and that you all start learning Dynamics AX 2012 – then when the new release of Dynamics AX comes out you will be up to speed on that version as well because all of the business functionality from Dynamics AX 2012 applies to that version as well.